Conventional web proxy servers may be configured to provide transformation of web pages or other types of web content for delivery over the Internet or other computer networks. For example, a number of so-called transcoding web proxy servers currently exist as products to transform web content by the application of appropriately-designed filtering mechanisms.
One such transcoding web proxy server is the NetBlitz proxy server from Lucent Technologies of Murray Hill, N.J. The NetBlitz server is described in greater detail in, e.g., S. Acharya, H. F. Korth and V. Poosala, “Systematic Multiresolution and its Application to the World Wide Web,” Proc. Intl. Conf. on Data Engineering, Sydney, Australia, March 1999, which is incorporated by reference herein. The NetBlitz server is designed to compress content so as to allow more rapid transmission of the content through a network. However, the NetBlitz solution is focused primarily on data compression and typically does not delete, edit or otherwise alter information content.
Another known web proxy server is the Spyglass Prism proxy server, described at http://www.spyglass.com/solutions/technologies/prism. This server uses a Document Object Model (DOM) to represent the structure of a web page, and a template to describe the web content to be extracted and modified. A significant disadvantage of the Spyglass Prism approach is that the DOM and template reside on the proxy server itself. This makes it necessary for the content provider to own or to control the proxy server in order to keep the templates synchronized with changes in web content. Moreover, the DOM and template formats are sufficiently complicated that specially trained personnel typically hand craft these modules for proxy customers.
It is therefore apparent that a need exists for an improved web proxy server which is able to interpolate web content so as to support a wide variety of different clients in an efficient manner, without requiring the content provider to own or control the web proxy server.